‘Blank slate’;, hmmmm, whoever could that be in reference to?
So last time, Amnesi-Sylar rose from Nathan’s shallow grave, committed a jailbreak, a couple of mortal wound heals and a kidnapping all before dawn while being sweet and sympathetic to boot. Then Samuel picked him up for a carnie rest cure. Gretchen isn’t a roommate killing lunatic (that was one of the carnie kids planted in Claires’ new sorority); just an insecure girl with a crush on Claire. They kissed and made up (extended version of which is on the NBC site for you GoG fans). Peter accidentally picked up Emma’s sound-o-vision; while not nearly as useful to his work as the speedy stuff, it does have some attack potential if one carries a violin and hits select sour notes. That probably won’t help Peter with his car-wreck door ripping needs, though. Hiro blooped over to Peter’s on one of his inadvertent time rides and promptly passed out on the floor.
Under Samuel’s guidance, Sylar starts on a path to rediscover his true identity. Hiro helps Emma accept and understand the great possibilities that go along with having an ability. Meanwhile, Peter enlists HRG to help him find a healer who can save Hiro’s life.
Nice picture accompanies- looks like someone’s gonna be getting lucky-run, tattoo lady, RUN! The photo also supports my good hair=quality episode/volume hypothesis.
C’mon- fake puke’s such an easy way to convey emotional trauma, and TV shows only have 42 minutes these days. I’m just glad we don’t get the full 3D of it.
Samuel’s moral ambiguity, that’s all swell, but I’m not sure I’m all for a goody two shoes Noah Bennet. Maybe he’s realized that part of the reason he’s experiencing his cereal-laden bachelorhood is because his morally gray comfort zone was pretty much what got Sandra to kick his ass out, and being mr nice guy hasn’t required him to make any hard choices yet. Once that happens? Should be interesting.
This is one of the reasons I’m enjoying this season, and what has annoyed me in the past about the characters, by and large- now we see them emotionally growing as human beings. Whereas in the past they tended to- like most people to be honest-keep repeating the same sorts of mistakes over and over. Noah would do anything to preserve the immediate safety of his family, but over the long term destroyed his marriage by lying to ‘protect’ them. Even when he really didn’t have to (his Building 26 gig-he could have told Sandra ‘I have to do this or Claire gets Guantanamo’d’-easy peasy) lying was so ingrained he didn’t know how to stop. Mohinder the lab whore-before he got his final tazing he came to realize he would sell himself out to whatever evil genius/daddy surrogate could protect him and aid his research. Peter’s grown some brain and still wants/does use his abilities to help people. Claire’s just growing up; Hiro too, somewhat, finally, I hope. His dial a Hero scheme was a fairly concrete, mature way to use his ability to help people, as opposed to sticking Ando in a spandex suit and setting up a lair.
Next week’s preview, and being vague enough to not require spoiler box: I thought being on at 8pm would make them have to tone down the freak. Guess not. :eek:
This season is certainly better than anything other than season one.
I usually hate (with a passion) series that hang onto the same ol dang villian (Innuyasha for instance). Seriously, beat the bad guy and introduce another one already.
Hey, I like Sylar as a character (keeps the mwah ha ha ha evil down to a dull roar and at least they let the guy have some growth, even though he regresses back to the chain saw finger crap the minute he has any sort of setback on the non-homicidal side of life); and I like this Bourne Identity thing they’re doing. But if it turn out that this is a Good Gabriel/Evil Sylar currently living in Matt’s head thing after all (culminating with an attempt to merge them together, possibly involving a transporter and aunicorn dog- I will be disappointed.
Actually I lied. I’d love to see the unicorn doggie again.
I’m enjoying this season. And I’m rather liking the mundane drawbacks to Peter having to swap powers like having to drive to the airport and catch a flight home this week after swiping the power of death and life itself.
I was most interested that Claire mentioned the magic blood thing again. I had assumed the show was aggressively denying that plotpoint ever happened out of sheer embarrassment. So it won’t work on tumours (except adversely) - what about throat wounds? Bad idea to even mention the magic blood - they really should have just made up some bullshit about why it doesn’t work anymore. We’d have all understood - it was a dumb idea in the first place but having all the characters only remember this astonishing cure when it won’t work is far worse.
I thought Hiro & Emma were good this week - I think we generally get to see Hiro at his best when paired with snarkier characters and he in turn often brings out different facets in them. And I continue to really like Emma in general.
I think Zachary Quinto is struggling with the material and showing the limits of his range a bit in his current storyline. Admittedly, that’s quite some sell they’re asking of him, playing what’s presumably a mixture of the Gabriel personality and Nathan but I don’t think it worked. Shame really - Adrian Pasdar can convey Sylar (and indeed Gabriel) very easily but this week Quinto’s whole ‘oh no, there’s no WAY I could ever DO such a terrible thing!’ schtick said less ‘Nathan’ and more ‘Niki Sanders’. As in whenever she would realise her Jessica self had been doing naughty things again.
I’m beginning to get a little impatient with the carnival storyline. We’re up to episode 6 and we still really don’t know substantially more about them than from their first appearance back in ep 1. i.e. Samuel has a dead brother who he won’t shut UP about and wants to recruit someone else to do…something for some reason. As characters they are interesting enough but I hope we start to see it all going somewhere soon. Hopefully now they have Sylar, it all will.
To end on a more positive note, VERY cool bit with Peter stopping the bullet…and then realising he’d done so that little bit too late. Eeek!
I think they had to mention the magic blood. The writers are in the precarious position of having to write good stories and pleasing the fans. If they don’t mention the magic blood there will be legions of fans pissing and moaning about why they’re not using the magic blood. If they use the magic blood, then that’s an easy button. Easy buttons are not interesting, so they can’t use it. So they do the best they can with the corner they’ve painted themselves into: They bring it up, then immediately shoot it down. They also open the door to an interesting idea. Claire and Sylar can get cancer.
I like how Sylar now has the Nathan personality template, but the Sylar memory upload. I am thinking that Darth Maul will be the first item on the buffet as soon as Sylar gets back.
Yeah, I bet he misses his instant healing right now.
Still looking good this season, so much so that I may have to stop looking at the Series Death Clock for this one. The stories are interesting, the characters are generally interesting, and the twists are generally real surprises (to me, at least). A few problems:
They need to go somewhere with the Deaf Girl thing. My husband commented last night that she must be dating the producer, since she gets so much screen time that doesn’t add anything to the story.
I agree, we need to get the lowdown on the Carnival. Do they just “travel” to some new empty field? What about permits and land rent and such? Did they have an itinerary a year in advance, “feeling” somehow that they would need to be where they are now? Answers, people!
I’m not looking forward to the Sweet Valley High Sorority episode next week. I’m all for the characters having (very) different story lines, but this one is just unbelievable.
But, again, I’m happy with this season. I love how they’re not trying to shoe-horn every character into every episode, but instead letting them “live” outside of the show-time.
“OK audience, see, he’s changed abilities-he can’t teleport anymore.” I think it’s kind of bad that they have to carefully explain these things to obsessive yet inattentive viewers. Season 3, they didn’t do that so much and everybody whinged.
They should have just come up with a ‘short shelf life/can’t be preserved long’ aspect explaining why they don’t keep a gallon in the fridge and its use requires Claire to show the hell up to donate.
Is that who he’s suppose to be-amnesia Nathan? I thought he was amnesiac Gabriel with a coating of Nathan memory. If he was amnesia-Nathan and was told he killed his mom he would have said “I wouldn’t kill (raise eyebrows, speak last word slooow) an-y-body”
Having as a fan base comic/genre fans who can and do parse source material like it’s the First Folio does have its drawbacks; having ‘magic blood’ as an idea is fine but now they have to explain why its not being used-when Nathan got shot, she was 2000 miles away, this time it’s tumor-gro.
Or, pretty much what you said :smack:
I always thought that the most thematically appropriate way for Sylar to die was to have cancer. Sylar is, metaphorically speaking, a Hero cancer himself-destroys the living to survive and grow
I really couldn’t tell. This storyline has the potential to get ambiguous at best and hopelessly muddled at worst.
Touché.
Also, if are taking bets on who Sylar kills first, I also want in on the Darth Maul pick. On a related note, how doomed is the kid who has the power to grant life and death? That’s up there with the magic blood in the plot-killing stakes if not removed pretty sharpish.
The few seconds after Peter gets healed are the first bit of good acting i’ve seen from him in the series. He actually acted looked and acted like a former immortal who just cheated death.
I am confused. Haven’t the writers pretty much painted themselves into a corner? What is preventing Peter from going into the past and getting his old ability back from himself? No more of this tactile power swapping mumbo jumbo. I guess that would make him too powerful, but come on…give us a valid reason why any “hero” with a modicum of intellect wouldn’t have already thought of this.
I was pleased that they gave us a reason why Claire’s blood wasn’t gonna cut it this time. All in all I am liking this season alot more than seasons 2 or 3.
I think he has the same power as before, he just doesn’t have the full power. So he can’t reabsorb it, (or at least that’s how I’m gonna fanwank it). Besides, Hiro’s gone and Peter can’t time-travel anymore, so too late anyway.
Between the magic blood, Peter’s hospice work, Nathan being a former pilot, and Charlie, I was amazed at how many callback there were. It’s like the writers are actually watching their own show for once. Next thing you know, Matt will remember his girlfriend just died. . . . maybe not.
The resulting causality loop is making my head spin:
Arthur: Come give your dad a hug
Peter: Fuck you! :: punch::
Then Arthur doesn’t have Peter’s arsenal of tricks, can’t travel in time, doesn’t swipe the catalyst from Hiro, Mohinder dies from bug cancer, and more crap than I can keep straight. Or maybe Peter recalls that ‘future me coming back to fix the past was a total Nathan shooting scarred douchebag in leather’ and thought better of it.
I’ll watch it again some time this week, but does Samuel really have any sense of how much of a terror Sylar is? He spoke about him having great powers, Edgar told Sylar he took other people’s from their heads, but is Samuel just so colossally arrogant that he thinks he can do whatever the hell it is he does to keep his people in line* to Sylar too? Or did he just not get to read the full homicidal maniac resume?
*One tool in his arsenal seems to be not minding his girlfriend giving new recruits a ‘welcome to the tribe’ bang.
It’s a small point but I see they have indeed definitely decided to just abandon their own timeline as making any kind of internal sense by making the events with Charlie be three years ago. Poor Heroes people - magically losing about two years of all their lives.
I was vaguely wondering this myself. Sylar does NOT play well with others. Maybe Samuel’s tapping into the Heroes tradition of people thinking Sylar’s kind of dumb and thus can be controlled. Still, I’m not quite sure WHY people keep thinking this because Sylar’s actually one of the smartest characters. In a ‘in the kingdom of the blind, the one eyed man is king’ type way anyhow.
Has every vaguely sci-fi / fantasy series in the history of the universe had a “Tabula Rasa” episode?
I like Sylar, but for the love of Xenu, I’m getting sick of the writers pushing the Sylar Reset Button all the bloody time. Is Zachary Quinto some sort of amnesiac character specialist who has written a NO CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT clause in his contract? “What am I? Am I special? Do I have a family? Am I a…* monster*?” [copy][new season][paste]
I’m confused about the whole Nathan/Sylar thing. I thought the man who everyone thinks is Nathan is actually a shape-shifting Sylar, but Matt supressed Sylar’s concsciousness and overlayed a dying Nathan’s consciousness on top. Nathan was buried, right? So why does he now look like Sylar and have his powers?
You’re confused – the real Nathan is still dead and buried. Syler as Nathan was also ‘killed’ and buried by Swoozie Kurtz. He was who pulled himself out of the ground, only now he has reverted back to being Sylar.
